An ex-firefighter and EMT became one of the most familiar faces in the service for his years of work putting on fire safety presentations at Bermuda schools.

Arthur Raynor, who retired in 2006, aged 52, after 30 years of service, continued with his safety presentations at his new home in Atlanta, Georgia, where he also gave counselling to young people who got into trouble playing with fire.

Colleagues marked his retirement by hailing him as “one of the most recognised and loved firefighters in Bermuda among the thousands of local schoolchildren who looked forward to his annual Fire Safety Show”.

Mr Raynor traced his inspiration for the job to a childhood incident.

“I was brought up in Flatts Village,” he told the Mid-Ocean News in 2007. “There was a barn fire there one day.

“Trucks came and the firemen jumped off with the big hose — it was just like the television stuff.

“It was then that I decided I really wanted to be a fireman.”

Mr Raynor’s rapport with children included a flair for ventriloquism and magic tricks that made his fire safety shows a regular winner.

After graduating from the Bermuda Technical Institute, Mr Raynor got a bank job before taking the plunge as a firefighter.

A bank colleague’s husband was a firefighter, prompting him to sign up as a volunteer.

He recalled: “I was there for a year and decided, yeah, this is it. The childhood dream came back.”

Mr Raynor’s career included some of the island’s most serious biggest blazes: the fire accompanying Bermuda’s riots of 1977, the year after he signed up, was his initiation into “the real thing”.

“The fire was there. It was ready. Make a mistake and it’s got you.”

He said his most frightening experience on the job was tackling a major fire at Belco in 2005, which knocked out power island-wide.

Mr Raynor was a keen volunteer at charities and was also leader of the children's ministry at the Southampton Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

He learnt ventriloquism with a custom-made dummy, Daniel, for use in presentations.

Daniel proved a hit with children during fire Safety Awareness Month.

Mr Raynor also caught headlines in 2002 as an amateur treasure hunter with his metal detector.

He unearthed an exceptionally rare coin at the East End — a “Hog Money” coin from just after the island’s permanent settlement.

He moved to the United States after his retirement and in 2014 was appointed senior fire safety education specialist with the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department.

Mr Raynor took his fire safety presentations to hundreds of schools and other organisations.

“There are three types of people in the world — those that want things to happen, those that make things happen and those that sit around and ask ‘What happened?’”, Mr Raynor said.

“I like to make things happen, so ‘Never stop learning’ is a motto I live by.’”

His funeral notice said he died in Fairburn, Georgia, survived by his wife, Elena, and his daughter, Alisha Raynor.

• Arthur Ernest Raynor, who for decades was the face of the Bermuda Fire and Rescue Service in Bermuda’s schools, was born on June 8, 1954. He died on December 12, 2023, aged 69.